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In this first stage, the catalogue focuses on the modern and contemporary architecture designed and built between 1832 –year of construction of the first industrial chimney in Barcelona that we establish as the beginning of modernity– until today.
The project is born to make the architecture more accessible both to professionals and to the citizens through a website that is going to be updated and extended. Contemporary works of greater general interest will be incorporated, always with a necessary historical perspective, while gradually adding works from our past, with the ambitious objective of understanding a greater documented period.
The collection feeds from multiple sources, mainly from the generosity of architectural and photographic studios, as well as the large amount of excellent historical and reference editorial projects, such as architectural guides, magazines, monographs and other publications. It also takes into consideration all the reference sources from the various branches and associated entities with the COAC and other collaborating entities related to the architectural and design fields, in its maximum spectrum.
Special mention should be made of the incorporation of vast documentation from the COAC Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.
The rigour and criteria for selection of the works has been stablished by a Documental Commission, formed by the COAC’s Culture Spokesperson, the director of the COAC Historical Archive, the directors of the COAC Digital Archive, and professionals and other external experts from all the territorial sections that look after to offer a transversal view of the current and past architectural landscape around the territory.
The determination of this project is to become the largest digital collection about Catalan architecture; a key tool of exemplar information and documentation about architecture, which turns into a local and international referent, for the way to explain and show the architectural heritage of a territory.
About us
Project by: 
Created by: 
Directors:
2019-2024 Aureli Mora i Omar OrnaqueDocumental Commission:
2019-2024 Ramon Faura Carolina B. Garcia Francesc Rafat Antoni López Daufí Joan Falgueras Anton Pàmies Mercè Bosch Josep Ferrando Fernando Marzá Aureli Mora Omar OrnaqueExternal Collaborators:
2019-2024 Lluis Andreu Sergi Ballester Helena Cepeda Inès Martinel Maria Jesús QuinteroWith the support of:
Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament de CulturaCollaborating Entities:
ArquinFADFundació Mies van der Rohe
Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico
Arxiu Mas
Basílica de la Sagrada Família
Museu del Disseny de Barcelona
EINA Centre Universitari de Disseny i Art de Barcelona
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We kindly invite you to help us improve the dissemination of Catalan architecture through this space. Here you can propose works and provide or amend information on authors, photographers and their work, along with adding comments. The Documentary Commission will analyze all data. Please do only fill in the fields you deem necessary to add or amend the information.
The Arxiu Històric del Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya is one of the most important documentation centers in Europe, which houses the professional collections of more than 180 architects whose work is fundamental to understanding the history of Catalan architecture. By filling this form, you can request digital copies of the documents for which the Arxiu Històric del Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya manages the exploitation of the author's rights, as well as those in the public domain. Once the application has been made, the Arxiu Històric del Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya will send you an approximate budget, which varies in terms of each use and purpose.
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Memory
The building of the Tibidabo Funicular is a building from 1888 designed as a train station from the lower part of the mountain, in this case the funicular train that gives access to the Tibidabo mountain, and not only to the amusement park; in the past it also gave access to the residents of the mountain. The building has the architectural characteristics of a typical train station. It is a building-lobby on the ground floor of access, with housing on its upper level for the person in charge of maintaining the railway line. Attached to this volume is the gable roof that covers the train and the access platforms to it, as if it were "the train house". Obviously, the building is in a sloping position, given the characteristics of the funicular. The building had been modified over the years, adding small auxiliary constructions, and even painted its façades like advertising posters. These posters gave the building a unique commercial character. The proposal says that this lobby building is what comes before the reality that the public will find in the park, a world of fantasy.
This intervention consists of cleaning the building of the added constructions, and freeing both the interior and exterior of unnecessary constructions. The building that covers the platform and the train is dismantled and rebuilt like the previous one, in order to waterproof this whole space, preserving the wooden structures, trusses, and part of the ceramics of the polychrome roof. Externally, all the existing cladding is cleaned and the station is repainted. The commercial paintings that had been done on the walls of the building could not be recovered for budgetary reasons and were repainted with blue lines, on a protective base of these drawings, so that at any time they can be made visible again.
The interior space was restored to its initial state, leaving the ceramic ceilings with metal beams exposed. The wrought iron pillars were also recovered, as was the pavement.
The lobby space is inhabited with white sheets that will serve as a support for the projections of images of the activity that takes place in the park. While waiting for the train, the public will be able to enjoy the projections on these sheets, built with plasterboard, which allow the existing building to breathe. It is a fragile occupation of space, as if it were a ghost. The soil is preserved, and coloured pieces are incorporated simulating flowers on the ground. These ghosts, the white sheets, are built with wooden slats when these surfaces incorporate closed spaces such as the ticket office or the pergola that covers the arrival platform.
The small washroom, lined on the walls and ceiling with curved panels of perfectly reflective stainless steel, reinterprets a room of magical warping mirrors. The windows are recovered and protected with sheet metal, like a skin of fish scales, fragmenting in its opening movement, inviting the public to enter, as if this new building were another attraction of the park. Natural light filters gently through these metallic curtains.
The intervention also included the painting of the two old trains in the manner of two large colourful caterpillars that move slowly up and down the forest, and the sheet metal portal that closes the trains at night and that in the backlight is a metal forest which gets confused with the real forest that surrounds it.
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